Gangsta Gun Club

In the last few months, the Gangsta Gun Club has been busy in our little hamlet. On shifts that I've worked, we've had two patients with GSWs to the thigh resulting in broken femurs. This picture from the MSNBC article on Grady Hospital in Hotlanta is exactly what both of the xrays looked like. Kinda cool, I thought. (By the way, for anyone that's keeping count, femur fracture is #1 on my list of Things I NEVER Want to Happen to Me.)

We've also had two GSW to the chest. One was self inflicted at point blank range, one was shot (I'm pretty sure with a rifle)by a freak from across the street. Both died. Shotgun boy was a depressed alcoholic that lost all vital signs in the helicopter on the way from Middle-of-Nowheresville to the Big Trauma Hospital, so they stopped at our ER. (Apparently they hadn't gotten the bulletin that real patients leave here in helicopters, not come here in helicopters.) He was DRT (Dead Right There). We didn't even get to try.

Now, Mr Shot-by-a-Freak was another story. He was awake and alert on scene, told the cops who shot him, was talking to the EMS crew, then lost vitals in the ambulance bay as they pulled in. We cracked his chest, and worked him forEVER, with no luck. (They caught the guy that killed him. Kinda cool to be able to tell the cops who killed you; not so cool to be dead.)

A couple of nights ago we got in a 21 year old punk complete with saggy pants, baggy underwear and all of the gangsta attire that I can't even recognize. He had a GSW to the shoulder. In actuality, it was a ricochet off the wall beside him that glanced off his clavicle. In other words, A SCRATCH. It requires very little direct force to break a clavicle. If it had hit him with any kind of real trajectory, it would have shattered that puppy, right?

Well. Mr. Gangsta had just gotten out of jail. Apparently he had been completely rehabilitated, since he was just minding his own business and some guy shot him.

**Note to all Gangstas with Guns- don't aim for the head. You'll miss. Aim for the belly. Then you'll at least break his freakin' leg, and you might get lucky and actually kill him!